Holland Pippin, and Cowley Crab.’  In Herefordshire it was the custom to open the earth about the roots of the apple trees and lay them bare and exposed for the ’twelve days of the Christmas holidays’, that the wind might loosen them.  Then they were covered with a compost of dung, mould, and a little lime.  ‘The best way’ to plant was to take off the turf and lay it by itself, then the next earth or virgin mould, to be laid also by itself.  Next put horse litter over the bottom of the hole with some of the virgin mould on that, on which place the tree, scattering some more virgin mould over the roots, then spread some old horse-dung over this and upon that the turf, leaving it in a basin shape.  The ground between the trees in Devonshire in young orchards was first planted with cabbage plants, next year with potatoes, next with beans, and so on until the heads of the trees became large enough, when the land was allowed to return to pasture, a proceeding which was quite contrary to their previously quoted assertion that tillage was best for fruit trees.  The cider-makers were quite convinced, as many are to-day, that rotten apples were invaluable for cider, and the lady who was famous for the best cider in the county never allowed one to be thrown away.  A generation later than this Marshall[436] noted that in Herefordshire the management of orchards and their produce was far from being well understood, though ’it has ever borne the name of the first cider county’.  All the old fruits were lost or declining in quality, the famous Red Streak Apple was given up and the Squash Pear no longer made to flourish.

As for prices, in 1707 apples were selling at Liverpool for 2s. 6d. a bushel,[437] a very good price if we allow for the difference in the value of money, but prices then were entirely dependent on the English seasons; no foreign apples were imported, and a night’s frost would treble prices in a day.  In 1742 at Aspall Hall, Suffolk, apples, apparently for cider, were 10d. a bushel, in 1745 1s. a bushel, in 1746 only 4d., and in 1747 cider there was worth 6d. a gallon.[438] At the end of the century, in ‘the great hit’ of 1784, common apples were less than 6d. a bushel, the best about 2s. in 1786 the price was twice as high, owing to a short crop.  Incidentally there is mentioned in the Compleat Cyderman a novel implement, ’a most profitable new invented five-hoe plough, that after the ground has been once ploughed with a common plough will plough four or five acres in one day with only four horses, and by a little alteration is fitted to hoe turnips or rape crops as it is now practised by the ordinary farmers’; much too favourable an estimate of the ordinary farmer, as Young found horse-hoeing rare.

An acre of good orchard land at this time was let at L2 an acre; and this is a fair balance sheet for an acre[439]:—­

DR. L s. d.